History of Antietam National Cemetery (page 9)

factorily for the delay unavoidably occasioned in the enclosure of the grounds and the removal of the dead.

The State of New York was designated by name in the Act, because shortly after the battle, through her State agent, who visited the field to attend and minister to the wants and necessities of the troops from that State engaged in the battle, an active and earnest sympathy was manifested in behalf of the accomplishment of the objects and purposes of the Act, and an offer of State co-operation was also tendered at this stage of the incipient measures taken for the success of the contemplated undertaking.

The Act of 1864, however, having been found to contain no practicable provisions for the establishment of a National Cemetery, and nothing having been accomplished under it, save the selection of the present site, it was deemed advisable to repeal it and to secure the passage of another better adapted to the desired end. Hence, subsequent legislation upon the subject was had at the session of the General Assembly held in the winter of 1865, when, the present act of incorporation was passed. The patron of the bill. Colonel E. F. ANDERSON, of Baltimore, a member of the House of Delegates from Washington county, Maryland, reported it to that body about the middle of the session, by which it was passed on the twentieth day of March of the last named year, and also by the Senate on the twenty-third of the same month, without a dissenting vote in either branch.

In the body of the Act the following persons were named as trustees for the State of Maryland, to wit: AUGUSTINE A. BIGGS, THOMAS A. BOULLT, EDWARD SHRIVER and CHARLES C. FULTON, gentlemen who, amid all the trials, delays and difficulties ever attending such an enterprise, have never for a moment permitted themselves to be swerved from the patriotic discharge of the duty devolved upon them, and to whose earnestness, faithfulness and attention the success of the object had in view is in no small degree indebted.

These gentlemen, thus constituted the Board of local Trus